We are in a Jacobin Revolution of the sort that in 1793-94 nearly destroyed France. And things are getting scary.
The Democratic Party vanished sometime in 2020.
It was absorbed by hard-left ideologues. They were bent on radically altering, or hijacking, existing institutions to force radical, equality-of-result agendas that otherwise do not earn majority support.
The American people want affordable power and fuel and energy autonomy. They do not want a Green New Deal that results in dependence on the Middle East.
They want fiscal sobriety, not a permanent stagflationary economy marked by bank failures, soaring interest rates, crony capitalism, and subsidies for those who choose not to work.
They know no country can exist without a border, much less while offering blank checks to foreign cartels that kill 100,000 Americans yearly.
They demand realist deterrence abroad, not the current woke military whose erosion is spelling the end American credibility and global stability.
Racialists are eerily embracing discredited Neo-Confederate notions of racial chauvinism, discrimination, segregation, and the old-one-drop rule of racial obsession. They are turning America toward a Balkanized war-of-all-against-all.
To implement such an unpopular program, the new Left must radically alter our institutions.
So the “Democrats” periodically threaten to pack the courts, end the filibuster, destroy the Electoral College, and override the states’ prerogatives to establish balloting laws.
They deny the committee assignments of the House minority leader. They engage in stunts like tearing up the State of the Union address on national television. With impunity they mob the homes of Supreme Court justices to leverage their decisions.
This revolution is run by elites and is a top-down operation.
University deans all but prompt students to disrupt invited campus speakers. District attorneys release violent arrested criminals without bail. Woke generals call their Chinese counterparts to warn them against their own commander-in-chief.
The Pentagon lectures the country on its supposed innate racism—even as the United States continues to lose wars abroad, abandons billions of dollars of equipment to terrorists, and allows communist China to surveille domestic American military bases with complete impunity.
Words change their meanings. “Racist” now means “don’t dare object.” “White” became the pejorative stereotype used by racists. “Diversity” means tired orthodoxy. “Equity” is a synonym for bias. “Inclusion” ensures exclusion.
Institutions are no longer recognizable. The FBI as we knew it no longer exists. Three former FBI directors either lied under oath to federal investigators, or pleaded amnesia in congressional testimonies.
Our highest former national intelligence officers lied under oath to the Senate. The IRS is weaponized against political opponents of the Democrats. The Department of Justice is more likely to send the FBI after grammar school parents than mobs threatening the homes of Supreme Court justices.
Still, to thoroughly erase America, our Jacobins must radically alter our customs and traditions.
So under the cover of the COVID quarantines, Election Day was made irrelevant. In the new America, 70 percent did not vote on the designated day but, fueled by third-party vote harvesting and relaxation of audits of non-Election-Day ballots, extended the vote over a period of several weeks.
Like the Jacobins, names and dates had to be radically transformed. 1619, not 1776, is now America’s birthdate and, we are told, it was an ignominious one.
Statues are toppled, careers Trotskyized.
Biological males suddenly have hijacked women’s sports—destroying five decades of women’s hard-won efforts to achieve equal treatment and respect in athletics.
What triggered the collective madness and this Jacobin takeover?
The Left’s perfect storm of the 120 days of riot, death, arson and looting of 2020? The COVID pandemic? The disastrous two-year lockdown? The 2016 election of the outsider Donald Trump?
All those catalysts and more.
As the country collapses under leftist nihilism, the revolution’s last gasp is to destroy Donald Trump—by empowering him. That is, the leftist legal vendetta is designed to win him just enough empathy to be nominated the Republican Party’s presidential candidate, but then to keep on indicting, gagging, and hemorrhaging him legally until Election Day 2024.
Trump was the first president to be impeached twice, to be tried by the Senate as a private citizen, and to have his private home raided by the FBI. Now he is the first president to have been indicted, effectively ending America’s moral authority abroad.
America now has three potential futures and two are bad.
First, the Jacobins have two more years to finish what they started as the founders’ dream descends into our worst nightmare.
Second, the revolution has so warped our legal system, our voting on Election Day, and the FBI, the CIA, the Justice Department, and the IRS, that even a despised, unpopular Left will “win” elections.
The third is that New York prosecutor Alan Bragg has jumped the shark.
His pathetic prosecution is so patently incoherent, illiberal, and in spirit anti-American, that two-thirds of the country will soon conclude the center is not holding. The Jacobins’ reign of terror is unsustainable. And so in 2024 the Left will not be defeated, but so defeated so that it is utterly discredited.
The choice is ours.
Once again the interference and undermining of the United States coveted Electoral process tragically. Victor I’ll take a hundred for two thirds.
“There is no more deadly peril than disobedience;
States are devoured by it, homes laid in ruins,
Armies defeated, victory turned to rout.
While simple obedience saves the lives of hundreds
Of honest folk.”
– Creon.
“Do you think I meant country matters?”
-Hamlet.
“In an outburst of hubris the overfed body will rush into sickness, while the jack-in-office will rush into the unrighteousness that hubris always breeds.”
-Plato.
I, too, hope that in the next two years the tide will turn. My worry is what terrible event(s) may await us. An economic collapse? Some world disaster that brings about future lockdowns? I don’t want to live in fear or borrow trouble, though the past three years of chaos makes one wonder what is next. The leftists feel emboldened and have watched this societal transformation take place with little resistance. Those who are brave enough to speak up against this tyranny are publicly rebuked and their careers destroyed. May good eventually triumph and justice prevail. Thank you for an excellent essay.
Everyone here needs to read thedocuments.info
You’ll see the Military Operation that has been occurring since 2017. Study up!
What “choice”…?…as the vote outcome seems no longer to be ours.
I don’t think that “utterly discredited” is an adequate outcome necessary to re-secure, rescue the Republic, its functioning checks and sustainable balance. We clearly have deeply embedded subverters among US.
I was taken aback by Jack Fowler’s admission that Joe Scarborough is his BFF. That is the same as saying you are best friends with a Nazi and you have not problem with their beliefs
In what possible way? All I can find is that he has trouble staying married and came out swinging against Trump! What ethnic group is he trying to wipe off the face of the earth? If he wanted to create a 1,000 kingdom, it’s not on wikipedia -nor is anything about an irrevocable opposition to all shopping malls!
Robespierre was beheaded, and the crowd cheered for fifteen minutes. Don’t expect that to happen here.
Predicting the future is always a crap shoot unless one has a divine vision. What was done in Paris and the larger cities did not carry out to the hinterlands, peasants had work to do, crops to plant and harvest, wood to cut for heat, all those activities that make basic living possible. King, Queen, Emperor, Jacobin, all made little difference to those whose time was taken up with simply living. So what will become of us, the middle Americans, the migrants searching for work to feed their families and themselves, the non-urbanized masses? Actually, nothing much. The Bronx jury never talks about the jury nullification as a legal question, it simply votes not guilty with no afterthought. One way to nullify a law with which you disagree is to simply ignore it. While those at the top will live in their guarded enclaves, those who do the enforcing live amongst the people. Do I care how Marxist Chicago will become? Not really, I don’t live there so let the residents deal with such policies. Will the boys in the hood take directions from the Marxist elites? Not bloody likely and no cop will risk his life to make them. There will be no Jacobin revolution, only the occupation of urban areas that cannot sustain themselves and the rest of us who can hold them hostage. He who holds the reins of power must understand who is at the end of those reins, what individuals and groups who are willing to do the dirty work and the price they will exact.
Is the choice ours?
Does anybody think that the swing state votes are real? AZ, PA, MI, NV, GA etc?
When over 95% of the “late” votes go for the other side? You go to sleep on voting day ahead, then wake up the next morning losing everything. And we now expect that to happen every time.
When ballots, as in California, are distributed willy-nilly throughout the state like candy?
With no voter ID in many states?
With no possible way to audit an election?
What the left is doing is truly NOT supported by the majority of Americans.
But does that make any difference? Really.
Have we heard of anybody going to jail for voter fraud?
If we harshly punished those that corrupt our elections we might have a chance. But we don’t.
Expect more of the same. Henhouse. Fox. No trials, no punishment. We are doomed.
Somebody tell me that I am wrong. Then back it up with facts.
Apparently, the choice is not ours. It has been made for us already.
Mr. Reynolds, if you happen to live in a densely populated Democrat\Communist urban area, I’m sure your terrors are genuine. I lived in one of those places for 30 years and experienced the steady degeneration in quality of life.
In the woods of Alabama where I live now, what William Bean says in the comment above yours is demonstrably true in my everyday experience: “He who holds the reins of power must understand who is at the end of those reins…”
The wicked elitists who cause this degeneracy seem to believe they hold all the cards and have perfect control on every lever of power. Their greatest weapon is death. The world of their everyday life is a glittering waste of debauch.
Take heart, Mr. Reynolds, and remember there are millions of people who are ready, willing, and able to do whatever it requires of them for the prevention of the “doom” that many say is the only alternative. Most certainly, it is not.
I have lived in rural areas most of my adult life, by choice. However, those country homes have been in decidedly Blue states — CA and WA.
Currently high up in the Sierras in the once great state of California, I am mostly shielded from the idiocy emanating from Sacramento. How long this will last is hard to say. Our small, historic town would be entirely ruined if a few hundred “migrants” were placed on our doorstep with EBT cards and free housing.
Has not happened yet, but the future is unknowable.
Having lived in both WA and CA, the demographics are similar. Big blue urban areas pitted against the rest of the state. Same with OR. Dumb urban voters controlled by political machines win every time.
There are tens of millions of conservative voters in CA. They don’t have a chance except in selected rural precincts. We have one-party rule here. In that regard, CA is the blueprint for America. State elections mean nothing here.
That’s my question. Is there a point at which the majority of people recognize these “elections” are anything but? Digging into to the ActBlue money-laundering scheme… it looks like a *significant* chunk of money going to democrats was “given” by 70+ yo “not employed” people. A 92yo woman in my town (Tacoma, WA) apparently gave 700 times in 2021-2022… really? a 79yo widow with no prior history of donating suddenly gave to every cause/candidate across the country, to the tune of $102k in 2021-2022. Really? Something stinks in the state of Denmark.
As a fellow resident of Tacoma (never never land in my case out in Spanaway/Fredericson/Parkland area) I had not heard of this incident. But I am not shocked and not surprised it is happening nationwide.
Last year I volunteered as a PCO for the Pierce County Republican Party but resigned upon the reelection of Ronna McDaniels to the RNC Chair. I have no doubt big money carried the election for Strickland and Murray even though 75% of the doors I knocked on claimed to be for Swank and Smiley.
That the democrats failed to have a booth at the Puyallup fair falsely led me to believe in the Red Tsunami that was barely a trickle and non existent in WA.
I agree with Mr. Jim Reynolds that the ‘rural’ areas are becoming less and less available to those of us who just want to be left alone from Big Government. I am afraid that Mr. John Jordan’s reaction to the ‘doom’ may soon be at hand.
Morning fellows. As a former WA resident with parents from 1948 to 2022 and Sweet Home OR prior to that and definitely prior to the fall of OR, I agree with what u say about both states and the growing probability of doom ahead. My theory is that Xi may be about to upset the apple cart very soon judging by his most recent tactic with Taiwan, you know, the very nearby island that Chiang jumped to in order to escape Mao’s tools in 1949. This is to say that there is some likelihood that our current selected gov leaders in DC and Western Europe may soon be given a lesson they richly deserve but that we do not deserve. At least, it appears to be headed in that direction. It is possible that Taiwan will return to China with a minimalistic tactic. Check it today. Westerly educated older friends in HK advise that a significant percentage of the older generation in Taiwan desire a return. America’s military is led by incompetency at the Pentagon, WH, and the Senate. America has spent its wad militarily in Biden’s proxy war with Putin, drained oil reserves and munitions with damn little forethought, printed paper money like it is going out of style. There appears to be no limit to what the fools will print to crash the USD. In fact, the once respected USD appears to be losing style with the BRICS’ movement as well as questioning by contracted allies. If THE fight does break out, there is a high probability the order of our World will be re-ordered most significantly.
That might the one good thing about the overreach: a possible wake-up before it’s too late.
And what are Republicans going to do about it?! This is the terrifying reality laid bare by Mr. Hanson, but he fails to mention what can be done to fight back against any of this. Like many Americans, I am sick and tired of seeing our country burn. Who is going to correct the course and steer us in the right direction? People continue to vote for candidates that push insane progressive policies leaving me to think the majority of Americans are fine with the insanity overtaking our country. The burning question I suppose is maybe it isn’t bad enough yet. I can only assume we haven’t seen enough destruction to think it’s time to do something different. I am not very hopeful.
TY, Dr. Hanson, for your as-usual excellent analysis. A possible addition to your list would be the apparently unchecked use of leftist-billionaire moneys to steer elections and to influence policy. Much of today’s political and social pathology comes directly from those who owe their power and influence to billionaire money. What is the answer to that?
like Harlan Crow, Rupert Murdoch, Elon Musk, & Peter Thiel?
And Meta, Apple, Google, etc., et al. Iow, doz Dems.
Those names you threw out there: how many elections of prosecutors have they influenced with massive injections of donations?
Musk can match Zuckerberg’s Zuckerbucks in swing states during elections: can you name a state where he did that? Or even significantly supported any Republican/Republicans in an election.
Any examples of where any of those four you named spent tens of millions of dollars to influence policy and put their financial fingers on the scale of an election?
Is Musk even a conservative? As opposed to holding a few opinions that are consistent with that of conservatives?
You’re going to have to do better than listing a few names if you want to insinuate they match the efforts and effect of the Soviet minded billionaires like Soros, Zuckerburg et al.
Economic collapse may be the next step after the COVID lockdowns to foment an irretrievable revolt that allows the authoritarian, totalitarian take over that ends the US Constitution, with emergency suspended nationwide, allowing the final destruction of The Republic. Look on the wall to see it writ bold.
Excellent analysis. You need to help us out by coming up with a Name for the forces that are attempting this Jacobin revolution. One that all can use. Nazis, commies, Bolsheviks, statis, fascists etc. have been thrown out; but we need something everyone can agree upon. The good guys cannot market/fight against 20 different foes because John Q Public will get confused as to who you are talking about.
Call them what they call themselves: Progressives. You can nail ’em to the mast with that all the way back to when they were banning boos, sterilizing the mentally ill, segregating the Washington bureaucracy by race, pushing contraception on Black Bodies, and locking up political opponents for sedition. Then you can tell the masses: “They’re making great Progress at driving the US off a cliff!”
Progressivists.
Progressive is something that’s new AND GOOD.
Progressivism is an ideology aimed at destroying the existing societal order by indiscriminately destroying anything and everything inherited from the past (under the assumption that once the existing societal order is destroyed, a “new and better one” will be built on the old one’s ruin. Essentially a proposition of jumping off the cliff with the expectation that we grow wings once in the air.)
In light of what happened recently in Chicago, in NY last year, in Seattle last year, etc., el al; John Q is already too confused.
I would like to believe that option 3, “that two-thirds of the country will soon conclude the center is not holding” and that they will reject democrats in 2024.
But how can that be a realistic possibility when the media and deep state actors feed the American people a steady stream of what the democrats want them to think? What can other parties and candidates do to counter media and government actors like Nazis in 1930s Germany?
The media is a huge factor and should not be underestimated. Also, the percentage of the nation that uses social media for their news intake is stunning and depressing since they, themselves, are a significant percentage of the population. The Republic does require an “educated” (aware) citizen. Judging by Chicago, LA, SF, Seattle, Portland, NY, general education across the nation, we have a ways to go.
“Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.”
~Ronald Reagan March 30, 1981
I’d add that a government should not have the power to ruin the lives of it’s citizens either.
The election in 2024 won’t happen. The Commies know their narratives are losing steam. The outside influences with lots of cash are losing patience that we are holding on to that Republic identity. Our monetary system is crashing. We will devolve into chaos and violence. We will emerge a lot better with a lower population. LET THIS SINK IN!
We will be bettttter! With a ” with a lower population “
The events and circumstances here — and the synergistic, aggregating outcome of them — seem to be undergirdingly and/or overarchingly dependent upon three factors — the skippers (or corsairs) of this ship of state, the huddled mass down in steerage (yearning to breathe free?) and, shall we say, the imponderable (call it chance, or fortune ….. or God).
As to this last cloudy of the prevailing elements, as it relates to the two previous (which are by and large identifiable) it may be worthy of consideration:
“”Divine Omnipotence and Human Freedom”
In: NEW ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGY
Antony Flew, Alasdair Macintyre, Eds. (1955)
The essay opens with a quote from St. Augustine: “Either God cannot abolish evil or he will not: If he cannot, then he is not all-powerful; if he will not, he is not all-good.”
Vox Populi, Vox Dei ?
I’m agnostic. Despite that, St. Augustine is a more than flawed Catholic if he presumes he knows the inner workings of God’s mind and thoughts. That if God decides not to abolish evil, it cannot possibly be for a greater purpose, and thus that means God is not all good. I’m supposed to believe that a Catholic anointed/appointed to saint status has a more perceptive mind and mental processes than his God?
Strange that St. Augustine skipped by his God’s flood that killed all but those on Noah’s Arc. Surely, St. Augustine could have had a field day condemning God as not all-good, because the newborn babies who also perished in God’s flood couldn’t have possibly been evil. But wait… the Catholic sect of Judaism/Christianity did not exist at that time.
St. Augustine didn’t feel mentally perceptive enough to comment on God’s actions prior to the birth of Catholicism?
I’m a little suspicious of a work of philosophical theology that carefully selects that very questionable quote for its opening shot.
Yeah. Quote is a cherry pick. Augustine’s famous metaphor in Of The Trinity trying to understand God is that we are children trying to scoop up the sea with a bucket.
As a citizen of the United States I read VDH and watch TC on Fox and sigh but in reality as long as I have a job and can take care of my family I have no choice but to grin and bear it. My identity as a Christian is different however and I would risk everything I have and even my own life to protect the teachings of Jesus Christ. The FBI be damned; I wear the badge of TCE (Traditional Catholic Extremist) with honor. The Wokes and their feeble Catholic-in-name-only octogenarian will not strip our Mother Church of even one piece of garment without a fight.
I re-read paragraphs 4-7 (inclusive) a couple of time.
I asked myself, facts, opinions, hopes or fantasy?
Dr Hanson, I pray you are correct and they are facts.
The democrat party did not suddenly vanish, it faded away. It began when the media began to lose credibility with light coverage of the Bill Clinton sexual exploits. One may say Clinton was no worse than JFK except for the fact that JFK was not accused of rape. Why the media became a shill for the democrats may never be understood but broadcast and cable news clearly has provided increasing cover over the years.
CNN’s fall into that abyss has been the most dramatic in the past decade. What used to be the news reports watched in US Intel centers around the world now has some of the lowest ratings in the game. Still those tuning in to main cable and broadcast stations are not getting a true picture of the issues this nation faces. Even a building in flames becomes a ‘mostly peaceful’ protest if it is of the left; while anything Trump does is dispicable, even when the nation was in a recovery.
the media enabling the democrat left back in the 1990’s led to more abuses by the democrat party leading to more biased coverage. A vicious circle destroying a nation. Did this not happen before in history????
At some point after WW2 the media changed. By the time of Viet Nam, its message had changed drastically. It appears that probably Colleges of Journalism actually changed, however, 1945 to 1969, seems too little time for such a significant change; seems like at least two generations of journalism professors would be needed to generate such a significant change in what it produces. Not so?
Candidate intelligence and character, policy analysis, a party’s organizational skills. All are the typical factors the pundits explore and measure to gain an insight that will provide predictive success. Can Trump win? Not using a typical factors comparison. VDH seems to acknowledge this when his sole argument for a Trump win is when the left finally realizes its exaggerated errors and eats itself. I hope so but am not that optimistic. VDH and most other reasonable pundits —for whatever reason — ignore the elephant in the room: the intentional, covert, malicious and successful past and ongoing perversion of our voting system. Without eliminating the multitude of voting rules/laws changes legally instituted by the Left, the Republicans can have the better candidate, policies and organizational skills but will still lose because the Left’s new voting rules will always ensure its win. So stop sleepwalking VDH. Recognize there’s been another such recent Left win essentially turning Wisconsin blue . The Left is already winning the 2024 election as we commiserate. Even if the Left manages to lose control and eats itself and alienates a few million more voters, it can still win.
Well said. Sadly. I agree with you!
Me thinks the second scenario (the warping of our legal and voting systems) is not only most likely, it’s already happening: most recently in Chicago where the Teachers Union won the Mayoral race. The ‘22 mid-term flustercluck was another example of the consequences of the warping of the 2020 race, a compromised and discredited voting process where 70% don’t vote on Election Day nor require ID to vote.
This may have been triggered in 2020, but Victor, this was just like your recent severe reaction to the sting. That is, it’s something that has been building for years. In the case of the Left’s eruption, it’s been building ever since the ideas that make up Progressivism were brought back from Germany by American academics.
We’ve had repeated stings over that time, and each time, the reaction was a little worse, our republic was eroded a little more. This time, it’s the severe reaction. There may not be an epipen that can cure it.
Yes Victor, as you said, “this revolution …” (unlike that of the French) “… is run by elites and is a top-down operation.”
There is only one motive that could unite our elites. It’s not patriotism, it’s PROFITS.
“To thoroughly erase America”, its people could not be allowed to be well-off, content & unified. So the first step was to ship all jobs to a totalitarian slave-nation. Afterall America was the globe’s #1 superpower. But then we decided to teach its communist rulers all we know.
To impoverish the majority of Americans, to make them serfs:
“By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate … an important part of the wealth of their citizens.” – Keynes
Victor, this is an unserious attempt at characterizing current events. It falls flat. The 2020 riots were triggered by what? do we have riots now? are the conditions the same? were the causes within historic norms for such things?
I am somewhat shocked that someone who has engaged in serious academic scholarship could produce such low quality work.
That the ideological alignment of the country seems to be more extreme is an issue worthy of study, both in how it is playing out on the right and the left. But this is not it, and it is a very unserious attempt at doing so.
VDH, how did the USA morph into a far-left country in such a short time? Who and/or what is most to blame? We cannot fight back if we cannot CLEARLY identify who and/or what is the enemy.
Our enemy is from within.
It’s name is avarice.
Our enemy is from within.
It’s name is avarice.